On this day in 1960 Boris Pasternak died, at the age of seventy. Pasternak's last years were dominated by the publicity and persecution which attended the publication of Doctor Zhivago (1958 in the U.S., 1988 in the Soviet Union), and the announcement that he had won the 1958 Nobel Prize. The Soviet line, communicated by quiet threat and noisy rhetoric, was that Pasternak and his novel were anti-communist; that by accepting the Nobel, Pasternak was agreeing to "play the part of a bait on the rusty hook of anti-Soviet propaganda"; that he was worse than a pig for having "fouled the spot where he ate and cast filth on those by whose labor he lives and breathes ... FULL STORY »
